Leioproctus, the hairy colletid bee, is a genus in the plaster bee family Colletidae and subfamily Colletinae. Its members are primarily found in Australasia and temperate South America, and include the most common native bees in New Zealand. thumb|Leioproctus sp. female on Haemodorum species in Western Australia
Leioproctus, the hairy colletid bee, is a genus in the plaster bee family Colletidae and subfamily Colletinae. Its members are primarily found in Australasia and temperate South America, and include the most common native bees in New Zealand. thumb|Leioproctus sp. female on Haemodorum species in Western Australia
==Description== Species within the genus Leioproctus are small, black, hairy bees ranging from 4 –16 mm. Most are less than 10mm, but the largest species Leioproctus Muelleri reach up to 16mm. The legs and thorax are covered in hairs ranging from black to red to yellow to white, although hair colour typically fades with age. The dorsal surface of the abdomen is mostly hairless showing the shiny black cuticle underneath. The clypeus and supraclypeus are typically hairy while the forehead is often mostly hairless, likely to avoid interference with the ocelli. Supraclypeus is almost completely flat and is densely punctured throughout.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).